View of Russia's troubled oil giant

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The punishment of the giant oil company Yukos by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and the assassination of a leading journalist there is seen as another sign of Russia's slide back towards totalitarianism.

In The New York Times, Erin E. Arvedlund reported on the oil company's huge tax bill. "Yukos on Sunday spelled out more details of [its] offer last week to the Kremlin, in which it would pay $US8billion ($11billion) in back taxes for the years 2000-03 - if it is given three years to make the payments."

Interfax reported that the offer was made to the Government on Thursday by Yukos's chief executive, Steven Theede. Later that day, a Yukos executive confirmed the substance of the offer, but said the Government had yet to respond.

"The Government is showing that this is not about taxes, it's about trying to change the ownership of Yukos," the executive was reported saying.

From Moscow, The Christian Science Monitor writer Fred Weir reported on Yukos and the murder of Paul Klebnikov, the American-born journalist of Russian origin, in an apparent contract killing on Friday night.

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"Though outwardly unconnected, these developments are fuelling a sense of disarray among Russians worried the political and economic crises of the 1990s, which Mr Putin appeared to banish, may be lurking beneath the surface.

"We see a slowing of reforms in every area. Everybody is very frightened," a political expert with the liberal Kommersant newspaper, Andrei Kolesnikov, said.

The German newspapers chided Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for not using a recent visit to Russia to criticise the Russian leader's actions.

Frankfurter Rundschau said: "Schroeder's silence does damage to Russian civil society and also to the German-Russian friendship, because friendship requires openness."